exiftool episodes

[George]

I would appreciate some additional info re exiftool.

I currently have 8 episodes of exiftool showing in task manager - the TM shows these are using ram but no cpu activity. IM5 Reports all background tasks completed and the TM shows IM5 in RAM with no CPU activity.
I know multiple episodes of exiftool are normal - but should these be shut down (or not) after the background tasks have completed? Many thanks - George

[Mario]

IMatch works with multiple ExifTool instances, based on the CPU count of your machine and what you do.
IMatch shuts then down when it closes, not while it is still running. ExifTool does not consume much memory and when the instances are not used, they don't consume CPU cycles. If you think that this causes problems on your system, let me know. I have tested up to 100 parallel instances of ExifTool.

You can control the number of parallel background threads (and thus ET instances) under Edit > Preferences > Application: Process Control. See the corresponding help for details.

[George]

thanks for this - I wanted to know what was expected behavior in order to understand the possible causes of the IM5 'freezes' I have started to experience.

I have 4 Gb of RAM on my older 'custom' rig - and IM5 reports low memory - there are dozens of smaller processes running - all small, but seem to add up to a lot. I have played around with the IM5 application preferences but it makes no difference to IM5 freezes whether its 10 or 6 or 8 ExifTool instances, other than the effect on my low memory.

I have posted another log in my 'freezing' post to see if there is anything of note there.

Many thanks again for the info - George

[Mario]

I see no log in your other post. And I thank you for including links to the posts you refer to, because this saves me searching and thus time.